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Synopsis
Back to Arheled Book One related how six young people, one from each of the five villages and the five stone churches of Winsted, began to encounter a mysterious stranger in brown whose odd words and deep thoughtful wisdom bring them gradually to an awakening of the mystery that lies over the small town and the five villages around it. As a Fell Winter buries the land in unprecedented snow, the six, Forest, Ronnie, Travel, Brooke, Bell and Lara, each discover different aspects of the mystery. Forest, the quiet painter, dreams of terrible events in the past and fantastic Star-people that perished long ago, changing the heavens: and finds that a man named Cornello is actually a dragon walking as man. A local caveman sighting, the Wild Man of Winsted, turns out to be not only a reality but a terrible one. Bell, meanwhile, finds that various carvings on the churches are actually pointers to places of importance, and the Churches themselves arranged in a ring, like forts. As things begin to draw together, the mysterious man in brown draws them all to the long mountain named Temple Fell outside Winsted, a grim eerie place, a place filled with secret power: and there he reveals that he is Arheled, Warden of the mysterious force called the Road, which touches the earth once every hundred years: this, 2011, being the hundredth year. Accordingly he has called them to greet the Road and walk upon it, to see the dreadful mystery of the ancient heavens and how they came to be what they are today. He sends them out to seek the Signs of the Nine Hills of Winsted. Book Two describes the things they discover. Each hill has something significant, a huge tree, a date on a stone house, an oddly drawn inscription, stones arranged on a hilltop like the footprints of a vanished tower. These point them not only to indicators in the constellations themselves but to various segments of a great and complicated tapestry woven about the small and petty but picturesque town. Meanwhile foes begin to emerge: not only Cornello, but the Witch of Winchester, and the ghost-king of Blue Skull Rock, and the awful Green Lady haunting. And behind it all a more sinister darkness gathers: the Lord of Chaos is draining his strewn essence of corruption back into himself, till he breaks the chains that bind him. As the summer advances, the Road imbues its’ Children with strange and unforeseen powers, even as the Witches and the Dragons come into play. Books Three and Four relate of the climatic events of that long summer, when Brooke summons an entire lake to kill a Dragon, and the clash of the two titanic entities the Wild Man and the Father of Dragons that follows. As autumn comes Arheled gives the Children concealed weapons forged by the Stars themselves and sends them under the earth via the Gates of the North, ancient portals hidden under a marsh that lead to the gates of Hell. Around these Arheled has constructed the five Churches as forts of power to replace the fallen Tower of the Tree. At the bottom of the earth are seven thrones, and seven victims are chained to them: on Halloween they will be sacrificed to incarnate the lord of Chaos. The Children descend for weeks under the earth, finding the bones of the buried Giants growing new flesh and a ruined city with ominous inscriptions, before finally nearing the last descent. At this point they have to fight through Dragon-born and Witches, and when they reach the bottom, they are too late: Cornello freezes them in Time, and they are forced to watch as he sacrifices their friends and relatives and incarnates Chaos. The fifth Book goes back a little, to show from the perspective of the Dragon-born just how they came into being, how their Father awoke and trained them in a nightmare Dragon boot camp, and how he sent them into the Graveyard of Dragons. Following the perspective of a Catholic Dragon, Gerald, who travels back in time, the ancient origins of the pre-China Dragon kingdom of the East are revealed. The sixth book deals with the aftermath of the rising of Chaos, the discovery of Mjollnir buried in a local cemetery, and finally with the gathering of the Children of the Road at midnight of Christmas Eve upon Temple Fell. Arheled takes them on the Road, revealing to them the story of the ancient Stars, their decay and their downfall into war. Section heading Write the first section of your page here. Section heading Write the second section of your page here.